Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Okay, I'm generalising a bit. I guess my point was more that the double rainbow guy video, which has provided the world with such joy, would have most likely ended up in a bottom drawer somewhere, if not for the internet. And that the internet has totally turned on its head the concept of 'shared experiences'.

Monday, August 23, 2010

Sunday, August 22, 2010

Okay, so after much biting of fingernails (and that's just me - I'm sure it was much worse for the organisers) the draft AussieCon 4 schedule is out.

Here's where I'm at...

Book launch: Macabre - A Journey Through Australia's Darkest Fears

Explore Australia's dark literature past, present, and future all in one landmark anthology! From the very earliest colonial ghost stories through to grim tales of modern life, Macabre will take you on a journey through the dark heart of Australian horror. With classic stories from Australia's masters of horror alongside the best of the new era, Macabre is set to be the finest dark fiction anthology ever produced in Australia.

Friday, Sept 3, 1600 Room 203

But this is real!

Why are we attracted to fictional horrors when real life can be so much worse?

Are attempts to censor the web an assault on our freedom or a necessary precaution? As in Australia, so to the world.

Talie Helene, Shane Jiraiya Cummings, Gary Kemble, Cory Doctorow

Monday, Sept 6, 1200 Room 210

I'm also going to be working on some features for various publications. Writing Queensland, ABC News Online, HorrorScope and my own blog. I've made a start on research for the panels and features, which I'm hoping to develop a bit more now that the election is (kinda) over.

Saturday, August 21, 2010

It’s true, lately there have been zombies everywhere – games, films, books. But I think that’s more that zombies are currently part of the mainstream. Once they drop out of the mainstream, they will still be popular with the people they were popular with before they were ‘cool’.

But don't take my opinion for it! Head on over and get the dope on zombies from a 'roundtable' of zombanistas.

Sunday, August 15, 2010

Chances are, you've already seen the Republic of Everyone's 'If you think, vote Greens' ad, which caused quite a stir last week.

The Greens were keen to use the ad, but it wasn't possible because the ABC asks all ad agencies who participate in The Pitch to sign over copyright for the ads they produce.

Greens spokeswoman Ebony Bennett confirmed The Greens contacted the ABC and Republic of Everyone over the possibility of using the ad, but the ABC would not allow the clip to be used during the election.

The ABC says it cannot be seen to pick sides in the campaign.

It got me thinking, I wonder if the situation would have been different if the ABC licensed content featured on the Gruen Nation under a Creative Commons licence?

If licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike licence, wouldn't it have meant that other people could have made use of the ad without it seeming like the ABC was endorsing the Greens? And wouldn't it also mean that, in general terms, people would be able to remix content from The Pitch. (You often hear suggestions about what the ad-makers could have done differently -- this would give fans the opportunity to demonstrate what could have been done differently).

This is a genuine question. I could be wrong. So I'm genuinely interested in hearing your thoughts on this.

Of course, the ad has been seen by heaps of people regardless -- over a million people tuned in to watch Gruen Nation last week, and the ad has been shared a lot on social media.

Green Zone tells the fictional story of chief warrant officer Roy Miller, whose hunt for WMD in Iraq in 2003 becomes a quest for the truth, leading him to mix it up with shady US government officials, a high-profile journalist, a disgruntled CIA agent and gung-ho special forces dudes.

"My intuition was two-fold. First of all, that it was likely that giving away books would sell books, giving away electronic books would sell print books, that just seemed really clear to me that for most people ebooks were not a substitute, they were a complementary good."

I love the idea. I love the idea of being unencumbered by the process that we're told we need to go through to publish and sell books. Theoretically, you could use Kickstarter to build enough seed capital to start your own publishing house, and then use Doctorow's strategy to ensure a lively market for those books.

My enthusiasm is tempered by the knowledge that many agents and publishers think that most manuscripts submitted to them just aren't ready for publication. This is the key flaw with self-publishing. Yeah, you can get your book out there. But should it be out there yet?

The second thing is that famous quote from Tim O'Reilly that for most writers, obscurity is a bigger problem than piracy.

Without a 'name', you can post stuff for free on the internet every day, but are your chances of breaking through any greater than jumping through the hoops of traditional publishing?

I'm sure there are many great books that haven't been published, but even if those books had been published for free on the internet, would any of them have been 'discovered'?

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

I retweeted this link to an article by Max Barry (Jennifer Government, Machine Man) today and, as you can see above, I declared it 'excellent'.

The premise is that if you're finding it hard to write it's not your fault, it's the book's fault.

"When your scene won’t quite come together, your novel idea won’t stay interesting, your main character refuses to fill out: it’s not because you lack talent. It’s because your idea is stupid. You’re trying to push shit uphill. And you may be a good shit-pusher, with a range of clever and effective shit-pushing techniques, but still: it’s going to be hard, frustrating, and ultimately you’ll discover you still don’t have your shit together."

It was like a revelation to me, because pretty much every day lately has felt like pushing shit uphill.

But, on reflection, while this may be true for Max Barry, maybe I'm just trying to give myself an easy out. Because I have a lot of ideas swimming around in my head, I'm constantly plagued by the thought that whatever project I'm not working on is better than the one I am working on.

And Barry describes this exact process. He worked through writer's block by giving these ideas a chance to emerge.

"The way I got out of it was to write a page of something new every day. The first week, I flushed out a lot of ideas that had been humming around the back of my brain, promising me they were brilliant. They weren’t. I captured them one page at a time and set them aside. The second week I wrote two things that were kind of interesting. Not very interesting. But not abominations, either. It was possible to imagine that in some alternate universe of very low standards, they could become novels. Not popular novels. But still.

"The third week, I wrote something interesting. And I discovered I could write. That the reason I’d been stuck wasn’t because I’d forgotten where the keys were. It was because the story I was trying to make work sucked."

I fear that if I tried the Max Barry strategy, I'd end up with lots of one-pagers, and not much else.

So what do you think? When is it time to cut your losses? And when is it worth pushing the shit uphill?

The other thing I'd like to get a handle on is the state of play with DRM. Is there a format war in progress? Which are the dominant formats? How many publishers are ditching DRM altogether with a view to staking a larger claim on the market.

I'm looking on this with avid interest. I can definitely see the value in ebook readers. I like to read authors such as Birmingham and Stephen King, who don't bother putting out books unless they're over 500 pages. :) And, no offence to either writer, but in many cases I could live without having a dead-tree edition. I like the idea of being able to search text.

What I don't want to happen is 'buy' a book, only to find I can't do with it what I want to do with it. What I don't want to happen is buy an ebook reader only to find I can't get the titles I want due to some DRM format war.

Authors such as Cory Doctorow have repeatedly raised concerns over DRM and the control it gives to distributors over publishers and writers.

What I'm hoping to learn while I'm at WorldCon is whether or not speculative fiction publishers are leading the way here. And if not, why not.

So, please, let me pick your brains! Send me your links to interesting ebook articles. Who's leading the way with this stuff? Who do I need to talk to at WorldCon? And what should I ask them! Leave a comment or contact me on Twitter.

Because of the nature of the stuff I write, I often find myself asking questions such as: 'How far away would you need to be to survive the collateral damage of a Stinger missile hitting an Agusta A109E chopper as it comes in to land'.

Writers who I admire, such as John Birmingham and David Rollins gather around them a posse of peeps who know all about this stuff, and this is what I aspire to do.

I realise that you can look stuff up on Google and read books about military life -- I do both of these -- but at the end of the day there's nothing better than firing off an email and asking the question.

I'm willing to trade my insider knowledge on how journalism works! (May not seem like much, but you'd be surprised how often writers get it wrong).

So, if you have experience in the military or law enforcement, I'd love to hear from you. Leave a comment, or get in touch on Twitter.

Wednesday, August 04, 2010

After five years, ABC News Online has bid farewell to its arts blog, Articulate. I'm crossposting this here because, for the time being, our web developers don't have time to archive all the old Articulate posts. (Some of the links to newer posts won't work, for this same reason)

I know I speak for all the contributors when I say it's been a wild and crazy ride, so I thought I'd have a look at some of the highlights. (And by all means, you can have your say by leaving a comment below)

David O'Sullivan interviewed DBC Pierre, hot on the heels of the author's Booker Prize win:

It [the prize] was a licence to go out and become a real writer and so I felt a duty not to capitalise on what I knew worked in the first one and not to write shit that I knew would go down well but really explore the art and take a punt and so I came out of my comfort zone of the first person voice... but I had all my fun in the dialogue and there's plenty of dialogue in this.

Later in the year Sean sparked controversy when he admitted he couldn't see what all the fuss was about when it came to Rolf de Heer's Ten Canoes. Articulate readers came out for and against the film, which went on to become one of the highest grossing Australian films of 2006.

Monday, August 02, 2010

I've started preparing for a panel I'm going to be part of at WorldCon.

It's all about the Federal Government's plans for a ISP-level web filter, and potential impact on horror writers/fans.

What I can immediately bring to the discussion is the reaction to the plans on social media, particularly Twitter. There has been a resoundingly negative response to the plan on Twitter, as has there been on any polls run on news websites (not surprisingly, given that the people who will be most affected are the people who are engaging online the most).

But what I haven't looked into is the potential impact on horror fans/writers.

3. What will be the process for deciding which horror content is and isn't okay?

4. How much potentially banned content are people accessing online, particulary via websites?

To date, the debate has focussed largely on child exploitation content (which those against the filter will tell you is irrelevant, given this content isn't shared via 'websites') and sex. But, as a horror fan, I can see the 'general public' being even more anti-horror than they are anti-sex, especially if you're talking about something like non-violent erotica.

If you're a horror writer or fan, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. Leave a comment or tweet me!